Summary: Flowers for Algernon

[ NOTE: These book summaries are designed as captures for what I’ve read, and aren’t necessarily great standalone resources for those who have not read the book. Their purpose is to ensure that I capture what I learn from any given text, so as to avoid realizing years later that I have no idea what it was about or how I benefited from it. ]

A retarded man undergoes treatment to increase his intelligence, along with a lab mouse named Alergnon

The book is largely told through the perspective of his journal entries, which he’s required to maintain as part of the study

As he is still stupid, he talks about the friends he has at the bakery he works at

He also has a teacher who he really likes, and who takes special care to help him learn to read

As he gets smarter he learns that his friends were mostly just making fun of him, which makes him sad

He soon catches up to their intelligence, and then passes them. He even passes the professors who are doing the study on him

He gets so smart that he can read 25 languages fluently, etc., and comes to find a flaw in their research

He learns that his progress is temporary, and that he and Algernon will soon become violent, lose the IQ they’ve gained, and then return to being completely stupid

In the meantime, while he’s smart, he falls in love with the teacher he’s long had, but he pushes her away because he knows he’ll be dumb again soon

Algernon dies

He becomes completely dumb, like before, but now he has true friends back at the bakery where he works, and people protect him

The last scene has him going back to class at the school for retarded adults, and sitting in class with the same teacher

He doesn’t really remember her, and he asks a basic question about how to spell something

She runs out of the class crying

He makes a note to remember to pick some flowers for Algernon

Lessons

Sometime’s it’s better to be ignorant of how mean people can be

Intelligence grants transparency, and that could be a bad thing

There’s a beauty to ignorance, a simplicity

It’s strange to love someone in different states of maturity and capability. It reminded me a lot of Alzheimers or something, where you are loving what someone used to be, or could have been, or something.